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Voters don't tend to rank the environment among their top five concerns, but green activists have staked out an early and potentially decisive role in the progressive movement to defeat Donald Trump.
Indeed, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is widening the left-right divide on the environment into a gaping abyss. Climate politics, in particular, is emerging as a politically potent wedge issue that could drive Democratic and swing voters, some of whom have yet to enthusiastically embrace Hillary Clinton, to turn out against Trump.
"He has said any number of things that by themselves would have been enough to demonstrate that he is a distinct threat to our progress on climate that we've made over the last 12 months, but also to baseline protections for clean air and clean water," says Clay Schroers, national campaigns director at the League of Conservation Voters.
The group has mounted a well-funded voter turnout effort aimed at blocking Trump and promoting Clinton, who won the League Action Fund's early endorsement-the first from the environmental movement-in early November. In 2012, 10,000 of the League's members took part in its volunteer-turnout operation, setting a benchmark for this year's presidential election. Says Schoers: "There is no doubt the environmental movement has led the charge to educate voters on where Trump stands on this issue."
Trump, if elected, would be the first president, and even world leader, to deny the science of global warming, according a just-released Sierra Club report. "Many have assumed that leaders of other nations around the world, including those countries most dependent on fossil fuels or with despotic leaders, hold similar views regarding climate denial and opposition to all climate action," states the report. "In fact, a review of the data indicates that Trump might very well be the only world leader not calling for urgent climate action."
Such a worldview incites the passions of environmentalists, an increasingly powerful constituency: A majority of Americans support stricter regulations on power plants and greenhouse gas emissions, would prefer to see greater investment in alternative energy development versus fossil-fuel exploration, and are willing to prioritize protecting the planet over economic growth. Trump's overt bigotry has dominated news coverage, but his anti-environmental rhetoric, if less noticed, has deeply alarmed environmentalists. The League recently compiled a laundry list of ways that a Trump presidency would be a man-made disaster for the environment: He has pledged to "rip up" the Paris climate agreement, abolish the EPA, and has hired North Dakota House Republican Kevin Cramer, an avowed climate change skeptic and a fossil fuels industry supporter, as his campaign's energy adviser. The list goes on, but suffice it to say that a Trump presidency could drastically reverse the achievements of the environmental movement.
NextGen Climate Action, the super PAC founded by billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, is on track to be one of the biggest-spending super PACs in this election. Last month Steyer signaled that the group will exceed the $74 million that it spent in the 2014 election. And this month, Steyer and the Service Employees International Union announced a $10 million drive to turn out voters in Colorado, Ohio, and Pennsylvania on behalf of Clinton and other Democratic candidates.
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During the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries earlier this year, NextGen led a full-throttle voter turnout initiative that focused on college campuses. The group organized more than 1,000 events in Iowa alone, and gave rides to the polls to more than 3,000 New Hampshire students in vans driven by NextGen volunteers.
The super PAC recently endorsed Clinton, but organizers' mantra is that the issue, not the top of the ticket, is what drives them. "The climate is our candidate," says NextGen press secretary Galen Alexander. "And I certainly think environmental voters have been first out of the gate to galvanize an anti-Trump movement."
Environmentalists' anti-Trump organizing is starting to draw notice. In June, Reuters reported that a single email blast sent out by the Sierra Club this spring detailing Trump's stance on environmental issues immediately netted $25,000 in donations and 15,000 new volunteers. "We couldn't have asked for a more powerful motivator than Donald Trump," Sierra Club's executive director Michael Brune told Reuters in response to the unexpected surge in contributions. "Our members are in shock right now about Donald Trump-they are asking how we got to this point and what must be done to stop him from becoming president."
Earlier this month, The Guardian published the results of an informal online survey of its U.S. readership, which asked them to "identify the one issue that affects your life you wish the presidential candidates were discussing more." Climate change topped the list for the 1,385 of respondents, drawing not just the highest ranking but also the most intense emotional reactions, illustrating the political potency of environmental issues, which is not always captured by conventional polling methods. "This is far more than an 'issue'-it's a crisis," wrote one respondent. "It's terrifying," wrote another.
Even the Houston Energy Insider, an oil industry publication, reported on the uprising of anti-Trump sentiment within the green movement, noting that Steyer's NextGen Climate Action averages 127 percent more "clicks" on social media postings that mention the presumptive Republican nominee than they do on posts on any other topic.
Environmental leaders' role in stirring up voter opposition to Trump is important because Clinton, like Trump himself, has failed to light voters on fire.
Trump's and Clinton's unfavorability ratings currently stand at 62 and 55 percent, respectively-making the operative question for some voters: Who will do the least harm? The answer, of course, depends on your priorities. But there is now mounting evidence that concern for the environment may become the galvanizing force that sways a majority of voters in choosing the next American president. This could prove particularly important for Clinton, who remains unpopular with many as a means to sway the throngs of environmentally conscious supporters of her former rival, Bernie Sanders. There may be environmental voters who would have been slow to turn out for Clinton who will go to the polls because they are so riled up over Trump's climate denial.
The pro-environment constituency's antipathy to Trump has special potency because voters' environmental concerns cleave so neatly along party lines. Pew Research Center polling conducted last year illustrates this ideological divide, finding that 76 percent of liberal Democrats believe global warming is a very serious problem, while just 14 percent of conservative Republicans share that view.
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On such top voter issues as the economy, health care, and terrorism, Democratic and Republican policies display areas of muddy overlap. But when it comes to the environment, the division between the parties is more black and white. Democrats contend that enhanced environmental protections are a good idea, while Republicans reject any action that would appear to privilege the environment over the free market. In other words, the environment makes a powerful fulcrum point for independent, undecided, or unengaged voters-especially Millennials-those voters younger than 34-for whom the issue has particular resonance.
"Our focus is on Millennials ages 18 to 35," says Alexander, of NextGen Climate Action, which will ramp up the voter turnout effort between now and November with a $25 million Youth Vote initiative. Alexander pointed to a recent Rock the Vote poll, which found that 80 percent of Millennials agree that America should transition to mostly clean or renewable energy by 2030 and that 78 percent thought the government should regulate industry to protect air and water.
Millennials aren't the only ones who agree on the need to protect the environment and fight global warming, an area of broad-based, bipartisan consensus. Overall, 67 percent of Americans consider climate change a serious problem, while climate skepticism is at a record low of 16 percent. Indeed, the percentage of Americans who believe that human activity is the primary cause of climate change has jumped 10 points since last year to a record high of 65 percent in 2016.
But Millennial voters have the power to swing the 2016 election, having now caught up with the Baby Boomers in their share of the electorate. The key question is whether or not Millennials turn out to vote, given that the youngest voters traditionally have the lowest turnout. In 2012, voter turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds was 40 percent, compared with 70 percent for the 60-plus crowd.
Democrats, with an eye on demographic trends, are aggressively engaging liberal Millennial voters in swing states. The environment is emerging as one of their top tools. Among other signals of the issue's potency, Democrats have tapped climate change activist Bill McKibben, an icon among young environmentalists, to serve on the DNC's platform committee.
"Millennial's take this issue very seriously, and frankly there is a strain of incredulity that there hasn't already been more action by people in power," says Schroers. "Certainly someone like Trump, who calls climate change a hoax created by the Chinese, is not going to be attracting their votes."
This story has been updated.
